The General Contractor (GC) for this stadium project sustained steel erection delays on a prior stadium project, which drove up costs. The GC was motivated to fix the issue on the next project after reviews attributed the delays to a lack of real-time visibility into supply chain metrics. The GC chose Loop Material Readiness to track materials from fabrication to installation, and integrating Loop Material Readiness with the GC’s modeling software allowed them to color-code models with corresponding statuses.
Material sequencing visibility: value drivers
Schedule adherence
Project Managers (PM) use Loop Material Readiness to forecast Material Readiness® in relation to the construction schedule. By identifying material issues early, PMs adjust workface planning and minimize time off tools, lowering labor costs. Superintendents use Loop Material Readiness for heavy haul planning. Access to heavy haul material weights enables planning well in advance of the required at site (RAS) date.
Material constraint avoidance
From supplier to staging yard to warehouse to construction, a superintendent sees near real-time material status in Loop Material Readiness. If materials are being fabricated out of sequence and caught early, the superintendent has time to contact the trade partner and resolve the constraint.
Material location
Finding a specific steel beam in storage is time-consuming with only a clipboard and spreadsheet. This project chose to use the Loop Material Readiness mobile app, handheld readers, barcodes and passive RFID tags, enabling users to sweep the laydown yard and automatically update material locations in minutes rather than hours. The Loop Material Readiness app guides the user directly to the correct material using both audio cues and visual mapping.
Reporting
The Project Owner used Loop Material Readiness reporting functionality to stay on top of high-level metrics like percentage of steel fabrication complete, steel shipped, steel received and steel erect.
Collaborative warehousing: Value drivers
Material constraint avoidance
On a typical project, the trade partner would receive the material and be responsible for storing it until needed for installation. However, this project uses a shared warehouse to store material from seven different trade partners, giving the PM confidence that materials will be on-site when required by work packages. Initially, the project used Excel spreadsheets to capture, record and update material status, but that proved inefficient for a couple of reasons:
Writing updates on paper and transferring to Excel was cumbersome, especially with some material arriving and being requested for installation on the same day
No auto-ID functionality meant that warehouse personnel would have to search by catalog ID instead of quickly scanning a barcode or RFID tag
Consolidating materials into one location and using Loop Material Readiness for receiving and inventory control provided the project with up-to-the-minute material status and location and enabled them to make forward-looking decisions based on actionable data.
Kitting and containerizing
Portions of a building project can be sequenced by room number, but this project didn’t have a digital process to “kit” material based on trade partner needs. Once Loop Material Readiness was implemented and material data had been collected, the project could compare future work packages to material on hand and prepare materials kits for each trade partner, based on room number.
